[Tome of Fire 02] - Firedrake

by Nick Kyme - (ebook by Undead)

  The brute grunted and stalked off into the storm.

  Moments later, Nihilan was joined by Ghor’gan and Nor’hak.

  “He fails to appreciate the subtleties, lord,” offered Nor’hak, his scaled power armour festooned with weapons and blades.

  “Ah,” said Nihilan, leading them off after Ramlek, “but I have you for that, brother. Ramlek was ever a blunt object, but a true sadist in spite of that.”

  Nor’hak hissed. The sound was tinny and resonant through his battle-helm’s vox-grille. He had no affection for the mad dog. He saw only a killer disappearing into the ash-fog, and in that vocation there lay a challenge for the well-armed Dragon Warrior.

  “This place,” said Ghor’gan, oblivious to what had just passed between the others. “It feels strange to return.”

  “How many years has it been?” asked Nor’hak, his distaste at the grave dust veneering his trappings obvious.

  Nihilan rasped, “It’s hard to remember… I feel him here still, though. Ushorak is with us.” His tone darkened. “And he craves vengeance.”

  Behind them, thickening ash was slowly veiling their Stormbird. Soon it would be well camouflaged. The landing site was chosen with secrecy in mind. None must know they had come back. Not yet.

  Ekrine, the vessel’s pilot, came through on the comm-feed.

  ++Make haste!++ he snapped. ++This muck is already infiltrating the engine vents. I have no desire to breath in air comprised of the long dead, either++

  “Our brother whines like a tortured slave,” said Nor’hak.

  Ghor’gan spat a reply, “It cannot be rushed. Respect must be observed for the fallen. Ushorak demands it.” He clenched his taloned fists and turned around abruptly. “I will snap him in two for his insolence.”

  “Stop.” Nihilan only needed to say it once. While Ramlek, who continued to roam ahead without comment, had the loyalty of a hound, Ghor’gan’s obedience was earned with something far more ironclad—faith. Ever since their first visit to Moribar, clad in the “cloth of their former lives” as Ushorak would have had it, Ghor’gan had believed in Nihilan. It seemed like centuries ago now, since their erstwhile brothers had tracked them down. Even as Ushorak sought Kelock’s tomb, Nihilan had vowed they would not go down easy. Outnumbered and outgunned, he had brought the renegades together, alloyed them with his master’s borrowed rhetoric. Ghor’gan saw a sorcerer no longer; he beheld a prophet. And when Nihilan fell trying to save Ushorak from destruction, he had dragged him from the fire and seen a will so great it could defy death.

  “Ekrine is right,” said the sorcerer. “We cannot delay. Our presence won’t go unnoticed forever.” In a lower voice he said, “He deals with his grief differently to you, Ghor’gan. We all have our ways, since Ushorak was… taken.”

  Ghor’gan swung his massive frame around, a cascade of shed skin seeping through his armour joints in a fine pall quickly lost to the ash storm. The bulky trooper hefted a multi-melta and checked the weapon’s ammo count belligerently as they carried on in silence.

  For Nor’hak it was too much.

  “I hate this place,” he said after a few moments. “It’s already dead, with nothing left to kill.”

  Nihilan pointed to the horizon, where one of the ossuary roads met a stepped barrow. Shadows moved through the billowing grey, heads bowed against the dust.

  Ramlek’s voice answered for him through the comm-feed.

  ++I see cattle++ His distant outline, hazed in the ash-fog, crouched down like a predator sniffing prey. ++Permission to engage, my lord++

  “Denied.”

  The resulting snarl over the feed betrayed Ramlek’s anger, but like a dog commanded to heel he stayed still.

  Nor’hak was already on the move, raking a long-bladed dagger with a serrated edge from its scabbard.

  “Quietly, brother,” Nihilan called to the grey gloom.

  Nor’hak had already blended into it. The Dragon Warrior was gone.

  “As quiet as the grave,” Nihilan hissed, biting his lip until drawing blood. He hid his rage well, the grief that boiled within him like a tempest. Ushorak’s murderers would pay. He would destroy them all in the end, but first there would be pain.

  * * *

  ++We should slay them…++ muttered Ramlek, a plume of cinder spilling from his fanged vox-grille.

  He was crouched in an advanced position at the entrance to a catacomb-temple, a gateway that led deep into the vaults of the world. Beyond it there was a threshold of stone slabs and spiked mausoleums where a clutch of Ecclesiarchy serfs and notaries went about their business. Bizarre cherubim-like creatures buzzed in the high eaves of the temple like insistent insects. Cardinals and lesser priests waved censers of sacred incense silently over the many tombs and grave markers. A crew of servitors wielding promethium torches went from brazier to brazier lighting each and every one.

  “I agree,” Nor’hak said to his brothers, who were several metres back, obscured behind one of the monolithic remembrance stones that led up to the gate.

  A burning smell affected the breeze this far down from the surface. Above, the air had been cold, frigid with death. Here, Nihilan could detect the presence of the crematoria, the molten heart of the world. Despite the radiating warmth, his blood was chilled by old memories.

  “No, we wait,” he said. ++Hold++ he added to Ramlek through the feed.

  Nor’hak was insistent. “We can take them!”

  He was about to reach out for Nihilan’s arm when Ghor’gan seized his wrist.

  “Release me, cur!”

  Ghor’gan leaned in and wished he could display his fangs through his battle-helm. “I’ll snap it,” he promised in a growl.

  “Enough.” Nihilan gazed at the temple gateway, using his warp-sight to penetrate stone and flesh. When the glow behind his helmet lenses had faded, he added, “There is a way through without alerting the faithful lapdogs.”

  ++I see it++ said Ramlek, catching the psychic resonance of Nihilan’s speech.

  “Lead us, brother.”

  It was a simple challenge. The cardinals and their charges were devoted servants for certain, but they did not expect to see enemies in their midst. Moribar was a sepulchre world. Here, the dead were supposed to rest. Theirs was a quiet duty. They were oblivious in their faithful ministrations, unaware that death stalked amongst them. In a few minutes, the Dragon Warriors were through the catacomb-temple’s threshold and entered the bowels of Moribar itself.

  Even in the darkness and the flickering crematoria shadows, bent-backed serfs toiled. They were gravediggers and corpse-men, the interrers of the dead, the burners of flesh and bone. Massive iron incinerators punctuated the lower tunnels like blockhouses. Lines of thin and sallow men, wheezing from the inhalation of too much tomb-dust, moved slowly towards the fiery gates of the incinerators. Upon their backs, or piled slovenly in carts and or on top of litters, were cadavers. Some were so emaciated they looked almost skeletal.

  These were the labour tunnels and Nihilan was glad to avoid them. His destination and that of his warriors lay much deeper, far down into the basin of the catacomb world.

  At its nadir they met the reaper.

  Nihilan alone stood before it, unarmed and with arms wide in plaintive supplication.

  “Why does he abase himself before that thing?” snapped Nor’hak from the shadows.

  The others stayed out of sight as ordered but could still witness the exchange between the sorcerer and the grey giant clad in robes of stone. A heavy granite cowl concealed the reaper’s features. It clutched a heavy bone-scythe in thin, long fingers. No sigils adorned it, no ornamentation or finery detracted from the purity of its form. It was like a hooded angel with its wings clipped, hewn from a tomb-maker’s slab and given life. Only the whirring of servos, the click and churn of mechanical components gave truth to this lie.

  “He shows allegiance to gain its trust,” Ghor’gan answered, rapt at the display.

  Nor’hak whirled to face him. “I
t is a machine. What trust can it possess?”

  “The trust its makers have imbued it with.”

  None shall pass.

  The reaper’s augmetic voice boomed like prophecy from the dark void of its hood.

  Only the dead.

  A loud chunk followed by a hiss of pneumatic pressure being released heralded movement. The stone cladding of its robes parted a fraction and it came forwards as if manoeuvring on a track-bed.

  None shall pass.

  Slowly, it raised the bone-scythe, its blade edge shimmering with electrical energy.

  Nor’hak was on his feet before Ghor’gan thrust him down again.

  “He’ll be cut in two!”

  Even Ramlek, though shackled by his master’s orders, looked ready to break out his bolter. He turned to Ghor’gan, clenching and unclenching his fists, smoke and cinder spitting from his vox-grille in apoplectic fits.

  “Wait…” Ghor’gan told them. “Have faith.”

  They watched the reaper’s shadow fall over Nihilan who still had not moved. When it was close enough, the sorcerer uttered something too soft for them to hear. The effect, however, was all too obvious. The reaper froze as if cast in amber. Nihilan lowered his arms, beckoning the mechanised golem down with an outstretched finger. He leaned in when the reaper was at the height of his battle-helm and uttered something else, straight into the cerebral processor that passed for its brain.

  Then he turned and walked away.

  “What did you do?” asked Nor’hak when Nihilan had returned, one eye on his master, the other on the reaper as it returned to its post.

  “Tell me something, Nor’hak,” he said. “When we were preparing to face our end against the Salamanders, how do you think Ushorak infiltrated the catacomb vaults?”

  “Past that thing, I have no idea.”

  “Knowledge, brother,” Nihilan answered, tapping Nor’hak on the forehead through his battle-helm. “I am no preacher,” he continued, “but words, not just weapons, have power too.”

  Nihilan laughed at the open belligerence in Nor’hak’s posture. He enjoyed teasing the highly-strung assassin. Had he not been such a superlative killer, he might have disposed of him years ago.

  “Once I had its attention, I left it with something. A trigger.”

  “How can you be sure they’ll come, master?” asked Ghor’gan as they stalked back up the tunnel.

  “Oh they will come, brother. They will come, but they must not know what we took from here. After what we’re about to do, they will hunt us, scour every battlefield they have ever fought us on. This, here on Moribar, is our birth site. Here is where they’ll look hardest. One amongst them, his eyes will be opened. When they do, I will shut them again. Permanently.”

  “And now?” asked Ramlek, his patience with cloak and dagger nearly spent.

  Nihilan’s eyes burned. “Now we return to the ship, where Ekrine has a course ready-plotted.”

  “To where?” snapped Nor’hak.

  “A nothing world really,” Nihilan replied. “But they will remember its name—Stratos.”

  II

  What Fate for Heroes…?

  “Retreat, retreat in good order, by Throne!”

  The vox-link went dead in General Slayte’s grasp. Pressing his dry lips to the receiver cup, he was about to speak again but his only answer would’ve been cold static.

  “Open a channel to Major Guivan,” he said to Sergeant Colmm, his aide and vox-man, in a breathless whisper. “Tell him he has field command. Colonel Hadrian is dead.”

  “And with him, the bulk of the 83rd battalion,” an insidious voice said from the shadows with more than a mere hint of accusation.

  Wiping the sweat from his wrinkled brow, the general faced the speaker.

  “If you have something inspirational to share with us, Krakvarr, I’d suggest now is the time.”

  The commissar leaned forwards, a stick of tabac snared between his thin fingers drooling smoke.

  “Only that we should advance, and crush this alien scum beneath our booted heels. Relent and it will only drive the jackals at us harder. They already have our scent.”

  General Slayte scowled, showing his teeth before turning to his command staff. A clutch of aides, officers and tactical savants were huddled over a hololithic display plotting the movements of the Night Devils regiment and those of reported enemy sightings in relation to them.

  The scene rendered in grainy amber, flickering with every percussive shell detonation felt through the bunker’s ferrocrete walls, was an erratic mess. The xenos had pushed and pulled their forces in myriad directions, first dividing and then massacring. Small groups, isolated platoons or straggling squads, were despatched first. Weak before the strong, that was the way of it. Then the larger battle groups were hit with ambuscade or slowly withered away by lightning attacks when at camp or after dark. Fear like a contagion was running through the regiment with virulence and every man, even Krakvarr, bore symptoms.

  General Amadeus Slayte was a proud man and an accomplished commander. His medals and laurels weighed heavy on his uniform, never more so than this moment. Reprimanded to the backlines by the Astartes, managing refugee columns and protecting assets already won, Slayte was secretly overjoyed at Commander Agatone’s order for him to return to the front. Joy turned to dismay when he learned of Chaplain Elysius’ disappearance.

  Locked in battle at the Ferron Straits, the Salamanders could not intervene. Not yet. The Night Devils answered the call. A slow but determined march to the edge of Ironlandings followed a rapid muster, the men eager to fight and die for the Emperor. And die they did, all too readily.

  Slayte believed that with the troops and armour at his disposal, making inroads to the Capitol would have been relatively straightforward. After all, these xenos, dusk-wraiths as the Astartes called them, were scavengers.

  He remembered the quiet before the screaming. It was a dark lullaby that sent him to nightmarish places when he’d managed snatches of sleep in the intervening weeks. The advanced elements were hit first, seemingly from all directions.

  An insect drone presaged an attack from gliders, skiffs and hover-bikes. Half-naked warrior-wyches plunged down from on high, reaping heads with their barbs and glaives. Creatures with gelid skin the colour of alabaster, strange even amongst the xenos, materialised out of the air and set about butchering with sharp, flashing knives. What passed for troops of the line, their segmented armour edged and bloody, shot whickering bursts of flechette fire into the Imperial ranks. A side glance at his carapace armour, and Slayte saw the remnants of splinter fire still embedded in the torso section and shoulder guard. His first adjutant, Nokk, had been shredded in the general’s place. He was not alone.

  The road to Ironlandings had run red with blood, its rugged ore fields soaked in gore.

  Dusk-wraiths, the Salamanders had called them, foes from a bygone age. Slayte knew them as the dark eldar. He knew them as nightmares made flesh.

  In his command bunker, a prefabricated structure of ferrocrete and leather tarpaulins, his command staff pored over battle plans whilst he tried to contact his commanders in the field. So far, the only tactic that had worked a damn was a retreat by degrees to the Ironlandings border. At least, it had worked at first. Now the xenos had blood in their nostrils and a hunger that had to be slaked.

  “They have us outmanoeuvred,” offered Major Schaeffen, somewhat redundantly. He chewed on an unlit pipe, an affectation he’d acquired since he’d run out of tabac.

  “We are slowly being encircled, major…” Slayte replied ominously, giving up on the vox cup and picking up his battered armour. He thought again about trying to remove the splinters but they were hideously sharp. Colmm had tried with a pair of pliers but ended up just wrecking his tools.

  “What are you doing, general?” asked Krakvarr from the shadows.

  Slayte shrugged on the carapace body armour, fastening the straps while Colmm fixed the shoulder guards. “Stepping out. I’ll no
t cower in this bunker waiting for them to come to us. They are on their way. Let’s meet them.”

  Krakvarr nodded, taking up his bolt pistol and cap. “This is the Emperor’s work we do, Amadeus.”

  “No, they’re the deeds of mad men, but what other choice is there?”

  “Only in Death does duty end,” the commissar quoted from the Tactica Imperium.

  “Guns and boots, men,” Slayte told the command staff. “Leave the maps. We won’t be needing them anymore.”

  A strange fatalistic resolve had settled over the command bunker even as the familiar drone started up in the distance. It would be much louder outside the ferrocrete walls.

  In the assembly yard beyond, Slayte’s storm-trooper platoon awaited him. Three armoured Chimera tanks, pintle gunners sat idly at their posts, would convey the general and his staff.

  “Sergeant Colmm,” said Slayte as he strode from the bunker to see a sky as visceral as freshly shed blood. Jagged silhouettes, like unsheathed blades, were moving towards them across it. “Contact the other commanders. Converge on our position, full assault.”

  “Suicide or glory, general?” Schaeffen posited, the unlit pipe bobbing up and down between his grinning lips.

  “I think suicide, major,” Slayte replied, “We have grossly underestimated our enemy. Even the Emperor’s angels cannot contain them. They are not scavenging or raiding at all.”

  “Then what?” asked Krakvarr just before mounting the embarkation ramp to the second Chimera.

  “I wish I knew, commissar. I wish I knew.” Slayte disappeared into the troop hold, followed by his command staff. The ramp slammed shut and the last of the Night Devils platoons headed towards certain death.

  It was approximately three hundred and fifty-six metres past the Ironlandings border that they met their end.

  Krakvarr’s Chimera was the first to be hit. The commissar was ensconced in the hatch, using it like a pulpit, spitting dogma and phlegmatic rhetoric to the men. He was halfway through a sermon evincing the weakness of the alien when something inhumanly fast, and so sharp it made a scything noise through the air, flashed by the tank. Krakvarr was arrested mid-speech, his idiot mouth lolling before his head fell from his shoulders. A half-second later a long range salvo from a distant skiff ripped into the front of the tank. The armoured glacis parted like parchment before a dark beam that skewered three crew and four storm-troopers riding in the troop hold before passing out the other side. Fuel tanks cooked in a micro-second. The carrier exploded with a loud crack, fire, smoke and shrapnel filling the air around it.